We have all heard that prolonged continuous stress can be a huge problem for health. It is also important to look at the opposite side of stress and ask what benefits come from your stress? Some of the best things that happen in our lives are accompanied by very high levels of stress. Sometimes we need it to drive or protect us.
Stress is indicative of what is important to us. By bringing awareness and acceptance to it, it can help us define who we want to be. What we choose to allow ourselves to be stressed about can help guide our lives. Bringing awareness to what stress we want to allow in and what we choose to set aside, can help us sort out the stressors that may not be as important to us.
If your stress is coming from sitting at your desk all day, it is likely because you are doing a job that is important for your finances, or maybe a project you have chosen to care deeply about. If we understand that the stress can help us to get to that goal, you can focus some awareness on the goal and begin to let go of the stress that is not helping you to obtain that goal.
Can you dig in when there is a stressful moment and allow it to happen, and fully process through your stress to help it become complete, instead of pushing it aside to deal with later? Can you use your breath to become one with your situation and learn the lesson that the stress is trying to teach you? Is your stress telling you to move, or to dig in? Ask yourself how the stress you are experiencing is helping, or protecting you?
Ask how you can welcome necessary stress, and release some of the more mundane sources? You will have stress in your life. Your choice is then what coping mechanisms, and mindsets you can adopt in a time of stress.
When you are nervous or stressed it is probably because it matters. Can you use this knowledge to help guide your life’s choices and passion? Think back to the last time stress helped you do something amazing.